Thefts in the Borders

Since we came here we have felt very safe. We hardly lock our doors at night or our garden gate. But today I stopped to get eggs near Melrose at a small farm we frequent on the St Boswells to Selkirk road. The owner was there and he said he was packing up selling eggs, which he does like all small farmers in the Borders based on a honesty box. He told me that last week he lost over 100 pounds and the same the week before, people just coming and taking all his eggs and leaving no money, or worse raiding his box of petty cash. He told me that some Chinese fellas came and robbed him of half his chickens and that just this weekend he stopped a gang of Polish guys from Newcastle trying to steel his feeder troughs for scrap metal. They were caught by police at Carter Bar on the way home. I was totally shocked. I had heard of diesel fuel being stolen from farms who often have the tanks with a simple tap, but the scale of what he told me was shocking and is mostly down he claims to Eastern EWuropean immigrants from the Newscastle area. He said if he leaves his tractor out all night the next morning no diesel.